Adjustment Layer stacking order

Hello There,

I just purchased a one year membership to Chromasia (www.chromasia.com), which I've thought about in the past and finally decided to give it a go. I find David Nightingale's approach to image editing is quite amazing and thought-provoking to say the least; impressive stuff.

Something I've noticed in all his edits is that when he converts to black and white, usually via channel mixer or b&w adjustment layers, the black and white conversion is always being placed in a position pretty high up in the later stack. He uses a lot of local masked curves for particular contrast adjustments (usually between 6 and 10). The following is a typical layer order - I will describe it from the bottom/background layer up:

Background image
Copy of background for cloning etc.
Local curve contrast 1
Local curve contrast 2
Local curve contrast 3
Local curve contrast 4
Local curve contrast 5
Local curve contrast 6
Channel Mixer greyscale conversion
Global curve for subtle color toning

My question is, is there any difference or benefit to having all of your contrast and luminance adjustments placed below your greyscale conversion, or vice-versa?

I have always loaded my base color image into Photoshop, then performed my duplicate layer for cloning, then gone straight into black and white so that all adjustments above are affecting the greyscale image, rather than the greyscale image affecting all the adjustments below. Or maybe it doesn't matter and they are affecting one another equally regardless?

-Randy

I suppose it can make a difference in that you can emphasize particular colors or color ranges in each curve, with the idea that you are ultimately going to use the channel mixer to leverage the presence of those colors in creating the black and white - sort of like using color filters to change the tonality of the resulting B&W.

I am not familiar with the photographer's technique, so I am throwing out a wild ass guess.

kirk

Also, why not clone on a blank layer? It would keep the file sizes smaller.

Randy looking at your list of layers in the Op was rather confusing to me. It's upside down to what you would actually see in PS.

Personally I would be doing all of my colour correction within the RAW processor (LR in my case). You need to have the underlying colour correct when you do your conversion to grayscale or the conversion will be based on the "wrong" colours. Also it will be difficult to apply a green curve correction to a grayscale image.

My now prefered method for grayscale conversion is to get the colour RAW conversion right first. Then if it needs any major cloning to send it to PS. Then I apply the conversion to the image as a VC in LR, either to the original RAW or the saved PSD file depending on if it needed to go to PS. I think the convert to BW option in LR/ACR looks better than using the channel mixer in PS which used to be my preferred conversion method.

Alan

JakAHearts wrote in post #16253818
Also, why not clone on a blank layer? It would keep the file sizes smaller.

Because the patch doesn't work on transparency.

BigAl007 wrote in post #16254501
Randy looking at your list of layers in the Op was rather confusing to me. It's upside down to what you would actually see in PS.

Personally I would be doing all of my colour correction within the RAW processor (LR in my case). You need to have the underlying colour correct when you do your conversion to grayscale or the conversion will be based on the "wrong" colours. Also it will be difficult to apply a green curve correction to a grayscale image.

My now prefered method for grayscale conversion is to get the colour RAW conversion right first. Then if it needs any major cloning to send it to PS. Then I apply the conversion to the image as a VC in LR, either to the original RAW or the saved PSD file depending on if it needed to go to PS. I think the convert to BW option in LR/ACR looks better than using the channel mixer in PS which used to be my preferred conversion method.

Alan

I know it's upside down from what we are used to looking at, but I wanted it to read in the order that he did the steps in; in retrospect I guess I just added an extra brain strain for anyone who's been staring at Photoshop for years! I guess I got too deep in my thought process of, "Let's get inside the photographer's mind and trace his every thought."

RandMan wrote in post #16255206
Because the patch doesn't work on transparency.

Patch first, then use the selection made to patch as a mask, and apply that mask

RandMan,

I think many times he does it that way because it isn't until later that he decides to convert to B&W. In other words, once he realizes that the color image isn't working or that it would look better as a B&W, then he does so. By the way, he has a forum on his site, but sometimes it takes him a long time to answer.

Bearmann wrote in post #16275005
RandMan,

I think many times he does it that way because it isn't until later that he decides to convert to B&W. In other words, once he realizes that the color image isn't working or that it would look better as a B&W, then he does so. By the way, he has a forum on his site, but sometimes it takes him a long time to answer.

Thanks Barry!

RandMan wrote in post #16253594
My question is, is there any difference or benefit to having all of your contrast and luminance adjustments placed below your greyscale conversion, or vice-versa?

Sure. Since the b&w conversion layer allows you to selectively darken or lighten certain colors, you want to work on the colors first, and then do b&w. I'm pretty sure (Elie would be better at this though) that working on the colors first with all 16^3 bits (R, G & B) before converting down to a grayscale in "only" 16 bits is better than going directly to grayscale and then playing around with brightness/contrast.

Plus, it does let you complete a color-processed image and converting as a last or second-to-last step, so you can easily switch the layer on and off to decide which you prefer .

armis wrote in post #16281617
Sure. Since the b&w conversion layer allows you to selectively darken or lighten certain colors, you want to work on the colors first, and then do b&w. I'm pretty sure (Elie would be better at this though) that working on the colors first with all 16^3 bits (R, G & B) before converting down to a grayscale in "only" 16 bits is better than going directly to grayscale and then playing around with brightness/contrast.

Plus, it does let you complete a color-processed image and converting as a last or second-to-last step, so you can easily switch the layer on and off to decide which you prefer .

Makes sense if I were to switch modes out of RGB and into grayscale, but I never do. As a result, the colors are infinitely adjustable while being contained under the adjustment layer.

To your second point about having a color image at the ready, usually if I'm doing a b&w conversion I will be building it off of a slightly over-saturated color image, so that I can get some deeper tonality in the monochrome version. In other words, if I clicked off my b&w layer it would most likely show an "unpleasantly" colored version.

RandMan wrote in post #16282238
Makes sense if I were to switch modes out of RGB and into grayscale, but I never do. As a result, the colors are infinitely adjustable while being contained under the adjustment layer.

You don't need to switch modes. I think that if you convert to b&w even while staying in rgb space, in practice the resulting picture only contains 65k levels of gray - any adjustments on top work off of that (I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong on this).

Plus, it doesn't change the fact that it's easier to work on colors first, then b&w. For example: if your white balance is way too cool, the entire picture has a blue hue; converting to b&w means you can't really play with the color sliders in any meaningful way. Any change to blues, for instance, will affect the whole picture. However, if you correct the white balance and end up with properly warm and cool areas in the frame, then you can use yellows and blues to brighten/darken only certain parts of the image.

Oh, just to clarify: when I answered your question about contrast and luminance layers, I was thinking color-specific luminance or curves adjustments. If all you do is global layers, then no, I don't think the order of the layers matters too much (aside perhaps from the bit depth thing unless I'm wrong about it). In practice, I found that switching a b&w and a global brightness/contrast layer does change the appearance of the image a bit, but not in a way that can't be adjusted back to the look you had before doing the switch.

armis wrote in post #16284028
You don't need to switch modes.

I guess you overlooked the part right after where I said, "but I never do"!